


Hope

by APlagueOnBothYourHouses



Category: Chicago Med, Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I think I remembered Mouse talking about a child dying while they were overseas, Jay needed a hug, Mentions of past suicidal thoughts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Will is supportive of his (older? thats what I went with) brother, author uses copious amounts of commas, but it's been a long time and my memory is shitty, mentions of child death, post 5x01, so this sort of brings that up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 15:49:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12279612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APlagueOnBothYourHouses/pseuds/APlagueOnBothYourHouses
Summary: It hadn’t been real, for a while.In the hours leading up to the shootout, before that little girl died because of him, everything had been numb. Jay had felt empty, and that emptiness had been the only thing keeping him together. He’d had to set everything aside in order to get the job done without anyone else getting hurt. Then she'd...And then the soul sucking dread kicked in.





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Like everything else I write, this is like the second draft with only a cursory glance for errors lol.  
> Also like everything else I write, its basically just emotional discomfort for my favorite characters. After the events of 5x01, I feel like Jay's emotional state should have been explored more thoroughly. So here's a brotherly bonding fic that I think might be a little clunky to read but oh well, I hope you enjoy!

It hadn’t been real, for a while.

In the hours leading up to the shootout, before that little girl _died_ because of him, everything had been numb. Jay had felt empty, and that emptiness had been the only thing keeping him together. He’d had to set everything aside in order to get the job done without anyone else getting hurt. Then she'd...

And then the soul sucking dread kicked in.

He’d killed a child. Again.

Just like he had over _there_.

It hadn’t been too long ago that he’d been okay, he’d had Mouse and Erin and things had seemed _calm_ . But like everything else, he somehow messed it up. Mouse had gone back overseas where Jay couldn’t protect him and Erin… Erin _abandoned_ him without even saying goodbye.

‘Don’t forget that you abandoned her first,’ he harshly reminded himself, ‘if you had stayed, maybe things would have turned out differently.’

Jay ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He was back at his old apartment, where he had lived before he’d moved in with _her_ , but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than sit on his lone couch and _think_ . Think about everything he’d messed up, everything that had gone wrong. He was alone, sitting on his couch, _remembering_.

Nothing had been real, not at first. At the time, he’d had a job to do. A job where emotions, especially the horrible ones currently churning around his gut, would only hinder his effectiveness. But now? Now, he was sitting in his bare bones apartment, alone, without a clue how he was supposed to move on. And now, everything that had happened in the past day was going through his mind in vivid, technicolor, flashes.

Angrily, he scrubbed at his eyes, horrified to find himself crying over something else he couldn’t fix. After everything he’d faced throughout life, from his dad’s lack of care, to losing his mom, to almost losing Will, and nearly losing _himself_ , all the way to _actually_ losing his two best friends, he thought he’d gotten used to the hollow feeling that accompanied failure.

His phone buzzed again and, like the other times, he didn’t even look down to see who it was calling.

It wouldn’t be Voight, and most everyone in the unit were out grabbing a drink to wind down after the horrors of the previous case. If it was Upton, he didn’t want the heart to heart and if it was anyone else with anything important to say, they’d leave him a message.

Absently, he looked across the room, taking everything in while actually focusing on nothing. It wasn’t healthy, what he was doing. He was spiraling, which he’d done a lot after first coming home. It always started as silent staredown with the wall, and it usually ended with him drinking himself into a stupor. Usually, he’d drink, pass out and wake up under Mouse’s melancholy gaze with little memory of what he’d done the night before. Sometimes his hands would be bruised, every once in awhile a scratch would appear as if by magic and on bad nights, Mouse would be bruised from restraining him from doing something stupid.

But now he didn’t have Mouse, and his chest ached knowing his friend was out there actually reliving the horrors they’d already been through while he sat in his safe apartment feeling sorry for himself. Jay couldn’t focus on _where_ Mouse was for too long before his brain started making unwanted connections between the little girl he shot and-

Again, his phone began buzzing, but this time it was accompanied by a loud hammering on his front door. He couldn’t help but startle violently at the sudden loud noise and he cursed himself when his heart rate seemed to pound in tandem with every knock.

“Jay, open up or I’ll break in, do not test me!” Will’s voice made it through his wide eyed staring contest with the closed door before his brain could conjure a phantom enemy that had come to finally claim him.

The banging continued as he stood up and ghosted over to open the door, and had he not been standing to the side when he pulled it ajar, Will probably would have accidentally punched him.

“Will. what-” before Jay could actually question his brother, the man was pushing his way into the room.

“Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” He whirled around as soon as the door clicked shut, “I’ve been worried, you weren’t answering anyone. Hell, _Voight_ called you.”

Jay’s eyes widened, if his boss had called, something must have happened.

He opened his mouth to ask just that but Will barreled on as if reading his mind, “Nothing’s wrong, I asked him if you were still up at the district after you ignored my first call, he said you’d gone home an hour ago and I was worried because _he_ sounded vaguely worried…” Will trailed off, the lump in his throat tightening at the lost expression on his brother’s face.

After a moment of opening and closing his mouth uselessly, Jay responded, “I’m sorry I worried you, I just assumed it was my team trying to get me to go out with them so I silenced my phone.”

He was sort of lying, and he could tell that Will wasn’t fooled. But his brother sighed after a few minutes and let it go. That was something Jay appreciated about Will, he was stubborn as hell but he knew when to push and when to lay off. And at that moment, he could practically see Jay’s frayed edges further unraveling, so he made a mental note to talk to him later and stored it in his brain for safe keeping.

Will placed a warm hand on Jay’s shoulder and motioned him back towards his couch. After hours of distress and a lingering emptiness, that physical contact alone brought Jay back into himself. The suddenness of his body no longer operating on autopilot was nauseating.

“I’m sorry.” Jay said again, his voice cracking slightly by the end. He swallowed convulsively, trying to keep his breathing from degenerating into gasps. No matter how bad he felt, he could not worry his brother anymore than he already was.

Will was shaking his head when the dark spots in Jay’s vision cleared, “I’m going to text Voight and tell him everything’s good and then I am going to sit here until you’re somewhere in the vicinity of okay.”

Jay nodded, and then turned slightly to finally _look_ at his brother. Will’s hair was wild, and there was a deep crease in his forehead, he was wearing his maroon scrubs underneath a jacket. He looked almost as bad as Jay felt which was… Odd, considering how bad Jay felt.

“S’everything okay?”

Humming noncommittally, Will shrugged, “you tell me.”

Jay cocked his head to the side like a dog, “tell you what?”

“Is everything okay?” The haunted, earnest look in his brother’s eyes threw Jay for a dizzying loop through memory lane. Once upon a time, Mouse had looked at him the same way. Back when he was close to-

“Yes, Will.”

The younger Halstead scoffed but, again, didn’t verbally call him out.

After a few minutes of silence, Jay looked over and found Will watching him sadly. For a second time, Jay remembered his best friend struggling to keep him from furthering his path to self destruction when they’d left the Rangers. His eyes filled with tears against his feeble protests and suddenly his brother’s hand was back on his shoulder.

“I’m-”

“Please stop apologizing.”

“I don’t know why I can’t just…” Jay took a steadying breath, “I can’t stop thinking about that little girl, Will.”

His quiet confession seemed to grow into a physical entity, it was trying to choke the life out of him and would have succeeded had his brother not been there to witness his downfall.

As it stood, Will interrupted his train of thought by pulling him into a tight hug, “I know, but it wasn’t your fault then and it isn’t your fault now.”

Jay pulled back, brows furrowed, “what-?”

“When I came back to Chicago, and into your life, Mouse hated me. For good reason, but… After we patched things up, Mouse and I were less enemies and more like two people with something in common… You. Before he left, we had a… A conversation.” Will chuckled humorlessly, “He let me know in no uncertain terms, what I had left you to face by yourself.”

“Will-”

“Stop. I know we’ve worked through that, Jay. But I will not leave you to deal with this one on your own, so be upset with me if you want… For keeping what I knew a secret, but don’t be mad at Mouse. He was worried if something happened, he wouldn’t be here to keep you from fading away again.”

Jay frowned, but trusted Mouse to know what he needed even when he himself didn’t, “I uh, I miss him, Will. And I miss Erin, and I miss _yesterday_ when I hadn’t killed that girl-” his breath hitched painfully, “I, I-”

His little brother shushed him gently, “we don’t have to do this right now. But you don’t need to worry about being alone for this. I’m here, your team’s here. It’ll get better again, you’ll see.”

Then, for the first time in the hours after the shooting and the death of that innocent girl, the shroud of numbness finally began receding and Jay felt something other than dread. He felt hope.


End file.
